Last Friday, the Amherst Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mark Swanson, presented a full-length program to welcome Amherst parents for Family Weekend. The program, entitled “From the New World,” opened with Richard Wagner’s prelude to his opera “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg” (“The Mastersingers of Nuremberg”), followed by Wolfgang Mozart’s concerto for piano and orchestra No. 9 in E-flat major with Alissa Leiser as solo pianist. The second half of the concert featured Antonin Dvorak’s Symphony No.
The Renaissance music of the 16th century is easily associated with sexual dramas. Susan McClary, the most eminent scholar of feminist musicology, wrote a whole book, “Modal Subjectivities,” to describe the various sexual scenes she found in late Renaissance music during the final decades of the 16th century. To understand such drama, it is necessary to trace the footprints of such music, which was born out of a confusing and chaotic time.
Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. — Theodor Adorno
Steve Reich, the American composer celebrated for minimalist compositions like “Piano Phase” (1967), “Clapping Music” (1972) and “Different Trains” (1988), just released a piece entitled WTC 9/11 for string quartet and prerecorded tape. Commissioned by his long-term collaborator the Kronos Quartet, it premiered at Duke Univ. this March as a musical tribute to the 10-Year memorial of the Sept. 11 attacks.
“Is there a market for something like that?” asked an audience member of Carnegie Hall soloist Jeremy Denk, after having heard him play several piano études of the Hungarian-American composer György Ligeti (1923-2006) at a Seattle Chamber Music Festival concert this summer.
